Context:

Key Concepts:

What is God's righteousness observed doing?:

Preparing for the ultimate rejection from the religious establishment.

Correcting the notion that it somehow could be done differently.

Making it known that those that will seek to follow Jesus will be called to follow in the similar manner, as He is following the lead of the Father to the exclusion of Himself, they will be following after Him to the exclusion of themselves.

Making it known that the reason one would not be on board with this program is either because they desire not the things of God or worse are ashamed of them.

What does this tell us about God's righteousness?:

Imagine the nerve needed to suppose that for something to be right for God to do that it has to be agreeable to man. As if God would have to keep coming up with something else until it worked with what man himself has planned. It is after all man's imaginations and plans that are violations of God's will in the first place; to have to make concessions to these on top of that? The religious are so incensed at what He represents that they seek to kill Him and the devoted are so incensed about how He is going about it that they are ashamed. There is very little middle ground because the whole objection is being supported by the foundation of our vain and depraved natures and insistence.

To know how the task of redemption could be performed differently one has to first be knowledgeable to the present state that man is being redeemed from. Few if any of us see it in it's deserving and truthful manner let alone see it in the depth and circumference that God has always (before even creation) viewed it from.

The challenge for righteousness is not just grabbing man and plucking him out of his sinful nature, but bring him through the midst of said nature to a new forever more stable nature that will never again fall back. It has never been the plan to take the present nature and build upon it to reach that objective, rather it has always been to have the new nature invest itself into utterly rejecting the old and working its way apart from it. This is something that the present man is willing nor even capable of without following behind the example and direction of Jesus Christ just as the Father has determined it. It is this way only because it is only righteous for it to be this way.

To be ashamed of this program once explained is systematic of the illness; a defense mechanism of being ashamed of one's present depraved situation.

How is man reacting?:

As all men react, opposed to it.

Notes:

Three days - Jonah rebels and goes the opposite way from sinful Nineveh cross a stormy sea to be transported three days by God in the belly of a great fish to where he should have been. Jesus comes from the right place obediently into the stormy sinful sea and is transported three days in the belly of death back to where He spiritually comes from, to where He most passionately wants us also to be. Both transports are prepared by the LORD.

How can God (the Son of God) die? Isn't such blasphemous? Being in the belly of death does not mean the end of His existence nor His soul (that which is eternal), only to be absent from the mortal body; just as coming into this mortal body didn't make Him any less God. And it does not mean that He is in either hell (which is likely more blasphemous) nor Abraham's bossom the length of this time for He had told the thief on the cross that he would see Him that very day in HIS Paradise. The illustration of what happened to Jonah is as close an analogy to what Jesus is to go through as anything we could have and still understand.

Is it right for Jesus to be ashamed of us in the same measure as us being ashamed of Him? Let's rephrase it, for Jesus to be ashamed of us for being ashamed of Him when for all this time prior coming in the Father's glory HE has given us to resolve our shame? Let's rephrase it, when His survivors in this life have testified to having seen a glimpse of said glory and seen the kingdom of God come with power in the form of the indwelling Holy Spirit?

The structure here doesn't suggest that Jesus rebuked Peter in front of everyone openly as Peter had done, it suggests that He did so before the Team and then related the bigger message of this lesson the public by calling them back unto Him.

Key Messages:

What does this say about our present condition?

We don't really know about our present condition; not enough to know what to do about it. The one conclusion available is that there is nothing that we can do about it, not even the few things we actually know about it. It is from this bases that we judge God. Either we judge HIM for what HE proposes to do or for how HE goes about it or we judge that HE will have nothing to do with us. Regardless, we presume ourselves to be in the right without knowing what the right actually is.

So why must Christ be rejected? Because HE God has been rejected by us all along without us admitting to it. It is not that Jesus has brought it all to this now, this is the way it always has been and it takes our ultimate rejection of Him to make that point legally clear. Legally His final judgment will not be made against us unfounded nor unproven whether 30AD or 2014AD.